A view to kill and food to fill

By Ari LeVaux

You’ve probably noticed the structure that houses One Up Elevated Lounge, located Downtown on Central and Third Street. It’s the building leaning ominously over the street, looking ready to fall on its face. This is appropriate, because everything about One Up seems designed to inebriate. In addition to the exhaustive list of beer, wine and specialty drinks at One Up, many of the tapas come in wine-based sauces. Others are accompanied by shot glasses of booze meant to complement the dish. And the “Recessionista Fridays” happy hour menu (5 to 8 p.m.) includes $3 well drinks and Coronas, $4 draft beers, and a free taco bar.

On a recent U.S. National Forest expedition, we broke a golden rule of camping and snapped off a piece of nature to take with us. It was to make an emerald beverage ... a pine sap-arac. Infused into a tart lemon-lime juice that's more whiskey sour mix than lemonade, this uses the bitter medicinal notes of pine to make whiskey that much sweeter. The stuff's fine hand-mixed and room temp if you're still out in the pines. But if you bring the loot back home, blended is better.